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To further the whiplash from my last comment, anyone here have any experience with tren?
If you're not willing to discuss it in public, feel free to DM. I have internalized LBBTQIA+^2 philosophies and my own transhumanism to the extent that I wish to transition from male to MALE.
Jokes aside, I'm just curious, and it seems trivially easy to get it here if I cared to do so.
The risks seem pretty high unless you have nothing to lose. But from my understanding you have a good career (and are moving to the UK and then maybe onward for further training/career stuff), a happy relationship with a girl that is (I think I remember) headed toward marriage, a book you’re writing etc.
The bad case (not worst, obviously, but we assume the worst is unlikely) for tren seems to be ending up as a bald musclehead with a bloated face and a worse psychological state, possibly with some long term medical issues. The best case is that you end up as a more muscular version of yourself, which I guess is better but doesn’t necessarily seem like it would improve your current life by that much.
Another comment lost to the
sands of timean untimely refresh. But I like/respect you enough to write it from memory one more time:You're correct in that the upside is limited, the question is how bad is the downside, because it's the delta between those two that should inform one's decision, with an appropriate amount of caution and epistemic humility.
As with most drugs, the side effects of tren can be mitigated by a low dose (of course the benefits go down too, yet it's not a linear tradeoff). I'm not aspiring to be the next Schwarzenegger, so a modest amount that's (maybe) unlikely to leave me a roid-raging maniac will more than do.
The thing is, there are other factors at play-
Being muscular is inherently good for you, muscle mass/proportion is one of the strongest negative predictors for all-cause mortality! I'd be lying if I said this was my primary motivation, especially given that I expect to either have been swiftly and unceremoniously killed by something else or just be outright biologically immortal by the time that's a real concern, but it's still a real and tangible benefit.
You have to consider the potential damage to your cardiovascular system from anabolic steroids, but if it's not obvious, it's not an obviously terrible tradeoff in a sensible regime.
It's the distribution between the two extremes that's provoking this discussion isn't it?
As with most illegal-ish substances, you're unlikely to notice the people who are using them judiciously. For every teeth grinding Adderall user stimming out, there's a dozen bored accountants or programmers using it to achieve incredible productivity. Similarly, for every roid rager out there, there's an unknown number of people who achieve a very respectable physique and keep it with relative ease, instead of becoming so grotesque or doing it on such rapid timescales that people notice and call them out. I'm confident the benefits grossly outweigh the costs for ADHD meds, especially since I take them myself, but I'm here to find out about the latter.
My career is doomed. So is yours, of course, but the number of years I expect to call myself a highly respectable and productive member of society are ticking down. Fast.
I expect doctors to be superannuated before I finish my training and become a Consultant like my family. I expect my job security to look increasingly tenuous in the 6 or 7 years of time it takes to get citizenship in the UK.
Worst of all, I don't even particularly want to go to the UK anymore. I still will, it's better than India, but my life there looks to be a struggle, and I'll consistently be looking longingly at the States, in case I'm still locked out for good. The very idea fills me with existential dread. Less dread and despair than the counterfactual case where I continue living the next few predictable years of my life in this blighted and benighted country, but an impoverished life nonetheless by the standards I had once held for myself.
I could have left ages ago, six or seven months if I hadn't procrastinated going through the motions before settling for giving yet more exams so I can start training as a psychiatrist instead of working as a humble Simia wardensis in a different country.
I am depressed, far from happy or even content. I should be stridently fighting with my med school and the ECFMG to get that bullshit sorted so I can fuck off to the US instead, or at least Australia/NZ, but I'm just so goddamn tired of it all. I'll do my best to try something next week, but I'm overwhelmed with bureaucratic bullshit from that same organization.
What's a book worth? It's a hobby, a more socially respectable one, that can maybe pay for a few beers, but it's more of a way to scream at the onrushing Machine God and tell the world that yes, this man of meat and flesh could write worth a damn while that meant something.
What elevates it from, say, just playing more video games? Believe it or not, people offered me money to do so, my storytelling skills and ability to be a close analogue to a DnD DM were worth something.
I'm still in that relationship, but as you can see, we have some serious, potentially irreconcilable differences when it comes to where we'd like to live. I'm quite confident you've read my AAQC essay, but if not, I'll link if you ask. It's a moot point right now, because I can't go to the nation I dream of even if I wanted to, not as a doctor at least, and even my attempts at learning to program ended when I realized just how fucked the average Indian programmer is when it comes to escaping abroad, and I simply lack the runway for that to be a reasonable aim any more.
In this case, I am both Sisyphus and the Doctor, the beetle forced to eat shit because it beats starving.
Don't worry, I'm not descending into utter nihilism or insanity like our buddy Skook, I pride myself on being fundamentally sane if nothing else. But yes, I think I'd like to look in the mirror and see some actual muscle before I turn to metal, be it as a paperclip or otherwise.
Will I make that tradeoff? Well, consider everything I've said and tell me it'll be the first; I walk into the unknown, yawning abyss to either side and a fraying rope to hold on to. That's life, and mine is still better than most even if I see great risk of that changing for the worst.
I have a better idea. Why don't you migrate to Chile? Serious question.
First off, doctors in the UK are middle class at best. You could go to Chile, work as a doctor, and easily be upper class or at worst upper middle class. You could live a far more prosperous life than in the UK. I am not joking. Doctors here are over-payed asf.
Not to mention, immigrating here should be much easier to achieve. The top universities here are desperate to take students from abroad to prop up their world rankings. I know an indian girl who is doing a phd program here.
And Chile is not a shithole, make no mistake. There is not other country I would move to, barring perhaps the US or Switzerland.
I mean, I've literally never considered the option, the closest I've even thought about in passing was Argentina, and that's got plenty of its own issues.
I would strongly prefer to live in an English-speaking country, do doctors there speak in English in your experience, or is it all Latin languages?
Unless further education nets me an enormous increase in salary, I feel deeply uncomfortable about taking time out from the short period of time I consider myself productively employed before AI takes my job or at least stops prospective employers from hiring more. Best guess for that is like 5 to 10 years, including lag time for people to wisen up.
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